Detroit City Hall

James Anderson, architect; plans completed in 1861, building finished in 1871

"Though a poll by Survey Associated showed Detroiters favored preservation of the building 58% to 21% in favor of demolition, the Common Council, with the support of Mayor Louis Miriani, voted five to four on January 17, 1961 to demolish the building. Preservationists took the fight to stop the demolition all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, but all requests for injunctions were denied." -- Wikipedia

Eugene, Oregon

From 1914 through 1963, the former Eugene High School building served as the city hall. The building was razed...

… to be replaced in 1964 by this structure….

The new city lasted from 1964 until 2015, when it was deemed unsafe and inadequate for the current needs of the city government:

The new city hall, designed by the Rowell Brokaw architectural firm, was to be completed in 2016:

The Sequence

Eureka, California

Built, 1904 -- Destroyed, 1960

J.W. Rowell, architect Gerald D. Majson, architect

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Inside, years of deferred maintenance furthered the perception of old City Hall as a piece of obsolete junk that fire inspectors had once condemned. 

“It’s an old trick,” said Dennis Morrow, pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul parish and the Grand Rapids Diocese archivist. “They weren’t doing anything to fix City Hall. If the toilet broke, they put up an ‘out-of-order’ sign and let it stay there for weeks. When people complained, they’d say ‘Yeah, we need a new building.’"

A full account of the failure of efforts to preserve the Grand Rapids city hall:http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/05/old_city_hall.html

San Jose, California

San Jose’s newest city hall, designed by Richard Meier, at a cost of $382 million (according to some sources, the most costly city hall ever built in America):

The old city hall was replaced by this new structure in 1958, which in turn was replaced in 2005 by the following building:

San Rafael, CaliforniaBuilt, 1909 -- Destroyed, 1966

This image is a screen capture from Google Earth. The city of San Rafael has no online pictures of its own city hall.

Winnipeg, CanadaHere is a sad example from Winnipeg, Canada. In 1962, in spite of

opposition, this building......

... was demolished and replaced with this:

For the sake of comparison: the city hall of Ypres, Belgium:

Some Thoughts on the Demolished City Halls of America

In the course of looking at these buildings — and the internet makes such explorations easy these days — I came across a number of cities that demolished their old city halls and replaced them with utterly undistinguished modernist structures. In many cases, I even had to rely on Google Earth to get a shot of the current city hall, since the city government sites didn’t think it worthwhile to post an image of their city hall on the official web site.

In stark contrast to the fate of those six American buildings: at the end of World War II, all of the great city halls of Germany had suffered damage — much of it so severe that, had the rebuilding plans been left to American city governments, they would all have undoubtedly been torn down and replaced with cheaper, but technologically up-to-date modernist glass boxes. But the citizens of the German cities loved their civic buildings, and so went to great effort and expense to restore them. Typical of such heroic rebuilding efforts is the Cologne city hall:

But, with the exception of the Eureka structure, none of the vanished city halls on my “Demolished City Halls” page suffered such damage. They were simply judged antiquated relics that had outlived their usefulness, and deserved no better than demolition and replacement by newer structures. In some cases, preservations made efforts to halt the destruction of their cities’ civic symbol. But in the six city halls on this site, the efforts were to no avail, and the no-longer venerable buildings were destroyed. In fact, city officials even resorted to underhanded tactics to encourage the destruction:

“It’s an old trick,” said Dennis Morrow, pastor of St. Peter and Paul parish and the Grand Rapids Diocese archivist. “They weren’t doing anything to fix City Hall. If the toilet broke, they put up an ‘out-of-order’ sign and let it stay there for weeks. When people complained, they’d say ‘Yeah, we need a new building.’"

One striking commonality of all the demolished city halls pictured on this site: every one of them was torn down in the 1960s. Many writers have pointed out the anti-establishment motif in some of the most salient features of that era: anti-war protests, Black Power, the pill, psychedelic drugs and music, etc. But we can see another theme emerging from “The Establishment” itself in its architectural programs: the destruction of old buildings and their replacement by modernist boxes, as seen most clearly in the new city halls, and even more so in the infamous “Projects.” One other possible reason as to why the Americans tore down their “outdated” city halls, whereas the Germans rebuilt them: the cherishing sentiment engendered by long acquaintance, and the native architectural languages of the locale. Gothic, Italian Renaissance, Baroque — these are styles native to Europe, developed over centuries, and as an expression of the personality of each region. Except for some colonial variations on European themes, America had no such native traditions. Architectural styles were imported, like the music, art, and literature, from old Europe. As long as Americans felt a reverence for the forms and spirit of the old country, they could build their city halls as expressions of the cultural values they inherited from Europe. But by the 1960s, the generation that had built the old city halls of Detroit, San Jose, and Eugene and others had passed from the scene of local influence. The new politicians felt themselves as progressive moderns, dedicated to new social and political principles. Old Europe might still be reverenced as the homeland of high culture, but not as a source of inspiration for civic policies. Two world wars, the rise of Communism, and a host of other European events could not inspire the same reverence that had led the earlier civic leaders in America to construct city halls that expressed reverence for European institutions.